codecs

well, i'm on a trip, and I brought 2 dvd's, and 2 movies in .avi. our portable dvd player is a pos, so my notebook is the best option for movies. unfortunetly, it doesn't have codecs for "backup" dvds, or .avi that used to be dvds. at home, divx solved all of my problems in vista, but in xp... rather less. iv tried quicktime, windows media player, real player, nero player, and divx player. divx could give me video, but it said that it needs the directdraw codec or something for sound. I don't have time to look, and I have a 9-year-old who wants movies NOW. any ideas? this is a problem for both dvd and .avi. (the portable player is fine for the dvds)